404 
are described generically and nine specific- 
ally, was published in 1891.* 
In the second and much enlarged edition 
of the ‘Acadian Geology,’ published in 
1868, Sir William Dawson confirms and 
elaborates most of the statements about the 
Devonian of Nova Scotia in the first edition 
and ‘Supplementary Chapter,’ and figures 
anew Devonian Spirifer (S.Nictavensis) from 
Nictaux.t He notes the occurrence of ‘ ob- 
scure remains, evidently of land plants,’ in 
more or less altered rocks on the flanks of 
the Cobequids, ete., and more particularly 
the discovery, in 1866, of ‘‘ stipes of ferns, 
apparently of two species, a Pinnularia, and 
branching stems much resembling those 
of Psilophyton, a characteristic Devonian 
genus,” in a gray altered sandstone or 
quartzite underlying unconformably a Car- 
boniferous conglomerate at Bear Brook 
(now known as McCulloch Brook), near the 
Middle River of Pictou. 
~ Doctor Honeyman, in a paper read before 
the Nova Scotia Institute of Natural Sci- 
ence in November, 1870, and since pub- 
lished in its Transactions, describes as of 
Devonian age a red band of argillites on 
McAra’s and McAdams’ Brooks, near Ari- 
saig, which he calls the ‘McAra’s Brook 
Strata,’ but in which he did not succeed in 
finding any fossils. Later collectors, how- 
ever, have been more successful, and in 1885, 
Mr. T. C. Weston, of the Canadian Geo- 
logical Survey, obtained from these argil- 
lites ‘‘ fragments of plants and fish teeth not 
certainly determinable, together with cer- 
tain interesting ’’ imprints “like those of 
Protichnites carbonarius.” | From the same 
rocks, in 1897, Dr. Ami and Mr. Hugh 
Fletcher, of the same survey, collected 
fragments of Pterygotus and of Pteraspidian 
* Acadian Geology, Supplementary Note to the 
Fourth Edition, pp. 20 and 21. 
t Page 499, Figs. 176, a, b. 
} Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada, 
Annual Report, New Series, Vol. II., p. 68 P. 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Vou. X. No. 247, 
and other fishes. The fish remains ob- 
tained in these rocks in 1897 have been ex- 
amined by Mr. A. Smith Woodward, of the 
British Museum, who thinks that they are 
either uppermost Silurian or lowermost 
Devonian. 
From 1872 to the present time Mr. 
Fletcher has been engaged in a minutely 
detailed examination of the geological struc- 
ture of northern and eastern Nova Scotia, 
for the Geological Survey of Canada, which 
has published geological maps of a greater 
portion of this area on a scale of one mile 
to the inch. In 1887 he referred to the 
Devonian system the rocks below the Car- 
boniferous conglomerate at Loch Lomond, 
Richmond County, Cape Breton.* From 
that point he has since traced rocks that he 
has described as Devonian, on _ strati- 
graphical and lithological grounds, west- 
ward through the peninsula of Nova Scotia 
as far as the head of Cobequid Bay and 
along both sides of Minas Basin, where he 
has estimated that they attain a thickness 
of from 10,000 to 15,000 feet.; With some 
Silurian and the associated igneous rocks, 
he believes them to form the mass of the 
Cobequids. 
Most of these rocks that Mr. Fletcher re- 
fers to the Devonian had, however, pre- 
viously been referred to other geological hori- 
zons. Among the more notable of these 
are the Horton series in Kings County, and 
the Riversdale series and Harrington River 
rocks in Colchester County. On purely 
paleontological evidence the Horton series 
had been referred to the Lower Carbonifer- 
ous, and the Riversdale series to the Mill- 
stone Grit, by Sir William Dawson, though 
it is now pretty generally conceded that 
both are unconformably overlaid by a ma- 
rine Carboniferous limestone. 
* Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress 
for 1877-78. 
t+ See the Annual Reports of the same Survey for 
1877-78, 1879-80-81, 1886, and 1890-91. 
